


dendroanthropotheism

by daekie



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Heart of Thorns Spoilers, Non-Graphic Violence, Other, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 15:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6963385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daekie/pseuds/daekie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your Wyld Hunt is the one thing that finally got you out of that place —</p><p> </p><p>  <i>and it wasn't enough</i></p><p> </p><p>(but the dragon?  your family?  is.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	dendroanthropotheism

**Author's Note:**

> anthropotheism  
> noun an·thro·po·the·ism \ˌan(t)thrəˌpōˈ-, -thrō-, -pə-, ˌaan-\  
> : the doctrine that the gods originated as human beings or are essentially human in their nature
> 
> dendro-  
> combining form  
> : tree : resembling a tree

The first time you emerge from the Pale Tree - well, not then, but even slightly before, when you cut down the dragon (and feel so guilty for it, because it wasn’t hurting you before you started, it has a right to grow even if it’s intruding) - it slammed its claws into your chest and roared, and you felt a seed of _something_ germinate before you were hurled out of the Dream like a riptide —

You wake up, confused, scared, and you are so, so, _alone_ in a way you don’t know the words to explain.  Everyone is here.  You’re surrounded by your people, but —

You are so, so _alone._

* * *

(Soundless, people say.  That’s what you are.  Soundless.  You see the looks they give you, and when the Pale Tree says you have a Wyld Hunt you relish it for the chance to get _away_ from them.  From all that they are.  These are not your people, for all that they _are_ , and they _do not understand you._

They think you’re broken.  You won’t let them be right.)

* * *

Caithe watches you with something broken behind her eyes.  She cannot see yours behind the blindfold - but you know where she is without seeing, feel where she is without feeling.  

(Spirits talk to you.  They have, since your first kill, panicked and slashing at a stalker too close for comfort with clumsy hands and a sharp rock.  And they are no substitute for the Dream, but they are far more than you, far bigger in their whole than you - so you listen.)

You do nothing to stop her, when she cuts down the courtier where she stands, pleading for clemency - but you want to, so very desperately.  The courtier had the right ideas.  And the Dream — it’s not yours.  You can’t even _touch_ it if you wanted, can’t even comprehend it with more than the few fleeting moments you remember before waking properly.

There are options, and you feel a little less alone —

Skip forward.  Cut.  The journey is the same, for all it isn’t; you trek and you trek, in heavy armor you’ve put together yourself, and when the Order of Whispers comes for you to take you away from the Grove you embrace the choice with open arms.  You will make them bleed for what they could do to you.  

When Tybalt dies, you _scream_.

When Zhaitan dies, your anger isn’t sated.

* * *

(The spirits talk to you, then, but only in images and scattered phrases and concepts — stone and strength and resolution and blue, blades and jade and bloodspatter, and venom and purple and _fury_ beating in your heart.  You do not touch the spirit that is leaves-and-calm-and-hoofbeats, trailing into the distance; because he is not for you, wrong as you are.  Besides: you wouldn’t know how to heal if you tried.)

* * *

So you go to the Silverwastes.  You go to the Silverwastes, and something quiet in your chest - in your sap-beating heart, in your roots - calls out to _like_ when you see the Vinewrath.  It should worry you.  It doesn’t.  You cut apart the Mordrem, you _tear them apart_ \- how _dare_ they be like-you, they are nothing like-you, they are animals — (but Scarlet Briar had the right idea, she had it true, to cut the other races apart to see how it makes them to see what they are without a Dream that you can’t reach out and hear) — but every time —

You feel agony, pure and blinding and not-your-own, when you kill the Vinewrath.  It drops you to your knees.

You _like_ it.

* * *

(the path to the verdant brink opens, and you walk there in a daze, because you can feel something _calling_ in your head a way you barely even remember knowing how to feel - _sister come here to us come to us you are loved come here come here become one_ \- and nobody stops you

                                                                                         nobody _could_ stop you

and **nobody** is ever going to stop you anymore, now that you’re here.  you are part of a whole for the first time in your life.  
  
poor, broken caithe.  too in love with the dream to comprehend there is anything better.  
  
when she comes, you’ll gut her yourself if she does not listen)

that’s something else you know about yourself, now, amongst your siblings and the deep green:  
if they are not like you 

 **cut  
** **them  
** **apart**

**Author's Note:**

> CG / cosmogone is a mordrem revenant, formerly Soundless due to latent dragon corruption instilled inside the Dream; post-HoT she holes up in a barn in kryta and eats rats because she's basically gone feral.  
> edited on 4/30/18 to fix grammar issues.


End file.
